A young woman on a hot day wears a summer dress down to her knees, a black cardigan is covering her shoulders, she defends a friend who is being verbally abused, the angry man turns, he begins to march towards her, pointing his finger at her face, jabbing. SHUT UP. SHUT UP. WHO SAID YOU COULD TALK? LOOK AT YOURSELF, AS A WOMAN, YOU ARE A DISGRACE! Where did this oppressive and aggressive incident occur? It happened to me at Speakers Corner, Hyde Park just a few months ago. For those of you who arent familiar with Speakers Corner, it is an area in the north-east section of the park where you can come express, listen and discuss with others about whatever pleases you. On first glance, it is a budding polemicists dream. The sides are lined with fanatical religious preachers screaming at the top of their lungs. People gather in small clumps as side debates form all around, there is an abundance of arguments ready to be challenged. When you first go you stay for hours until it becomes dark, finally having access to debate face to face, rather than with the members of Ray Comforts Facebook group. As I visited there more often my arguing calmed down, I started to hone my debating skills, learning the arguments of the faithful and in turn creating my own shaped rebuttals. Soon enough I started to notice that things werent as I imagined there. Being a Woman The first problem I had, which leads back to my initial tale, is that of being woman. I found myself severely outnumbered in large crowds of howling men. A lot of the time I would be talked over and not listened to. Of course there were other women around, but they became passive listeners in the background. In a place that is supposed to give everyone an equal voice, papa patriarchy still rules, but why? Naturally its because of religion, the grand old suppressing agent. As Atheists we know we have struggled in the past to name four horseWOMEN and this gender silence is certainly thriving in the park. If you are a woman, looking for a debating challenge, head down there, we need numbers. The incident that happened to me was admittedly very scary, the man had to be held back and all I did was tell him to calm down. Whats the point of this story? He was a Muslim. The Main Culprits Before you start to panic, this is not writing against Muslims. Of course Speakers Corner is not the place to locate any reasonable ones. What I do wish to draw attention to is that it has become a nidus for extremism and brainwashing. The proof is in the dynamics. If you look around, you will notice that most hardcore Christians and Catholics are still using the traditional method of standing on platforms and shouting like lunatics. However, the Muslims tend to have their own well-laid out and appealing stalls. Also, I have seen that they will stand directly in front of the soapbox speakers and intimidate them in large groups, another sneaky tactic. One method is filming you without asking first, to then place on their highly biased Youtube channels. Be aware of this! They do not waste their time shouting, but rather moving around in the crowd targeting people individually. I used to spend a lot of my time debating with these foot-soldiers until one day I had heard their arguments so often that I was able to finish one of their sentences. This was shocking for them, but it just highlighted how they are trained and sent out. Extremists are sneaking up on us. This is not to say that they should not be there, but all I have witnessed are intimidation and isolation tactics and there are not enough Atheists to challenge and stop this. There are rarely any Muslim women debating, so it is difficult to have a voice as a woman, especially an outsider. Another shocking conversation I had with a young Muslim man was a woman doesnt deserve to get raped..but and of course my jaw dropped to the grass, if she dresses a certain way, afterwards she must think...if I hadnt of worn that, I wouldnt have got raped.
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 18:24:28 +0000
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